


Occult Infection

by ivoryandhorn



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-20
Updated: 2019-07-20
Packaged: 2020-07-09 14:50:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19889626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivoryandhorn/pseuds/ivoryandhorn
Summary: Sherlock picks apart Moriarty's remains, and misses a man he never knew.(Down in the dark of him, Moriarty is alive. )





	Occult Infection

**Author's Note:**

> Set between S2 and S3.

_Somewhere down in the dark of him, Moriarty opens his eyes._

* * *

Dismantling Richard Brook proved to be dismayingly difficult. Being technically dead, Sherlock couldn’t use his usual method of walking into Scotland Yard and telling everyone present how stupid they’d all been. No, he had to be _subtle_. A nudge here, a push there. He had to persuade everyone to look twice, to look again; to show them how to spot the jagged edges where Moriarty had inserted Richard Brook into the world--all without tipping his hand. Sometimes it took two or three different angles before people saw what Sherlock needed them to see. People were really quite stupid sometimes, and Moriarty had been very good at what he did.

Sherlock could have asked Mycroft for help, but he didn’t want to. Richard Brook had been a move in Moriarty’s game, and Moriarty’s game was Sherlock’s to win. And it was so satisfying when he finally made all those ignoramuses do what they should have known to do themselves from the beginning. Every triumph was a balm on the lonely nights Sherlock spent hiding and hunting Moriarty’s network.

Not being able to reveal his own involvement made the whole business far more difficult than it really needed to be. And yet, as the months passed, Sherlock came to view it as part of the game. Part of the charm. It was rather novel, not being able to get his hands dirty. Perhaps this was how it felt to be Jim Moriarty.

* * *

What the dissolution of Richard Brook reveals is not Moriarty, but the space where Moriarty should be. Round 2: Begin. Sherlock digs and digs and digs on his phone, in internet cafes around the world, determined to not just confirm Moriarty’s existence but to drag all of him back into the light. Not just the court records, not just the camera footage. All of it. The fake identities, the rotating flats, the school awards and the family. There’s just a pit in the paperwork where all of that should be, quite easy to miss if you don’t know what to look for: Moriarty was always good at disappearing acts. Though not so good at it that Sherlock can’t see the edges he left behind. Sherlock knits most of it back together. (The gaps that remain are frustratingly large. It would be a draw, but Sherlock won’t give up, not until he holds all of Moriarty in his hands.) Through Sherlock, James Moriarty is revealed to the world, and occupies a space in it the way he never had in life.

Some of the edges are a bit too neat, the threads just a little too obvious. He can’t shake the sense that Moriarty had erased himself just so he could be found--but only by the right person

* * *

_He can feel Moriarty inside him. When he’s bored, when he’s angry, when life is pointless and dull and he craves a pill or needle or both to make the hours pass faster, he can feel it. Down in the dark of him, Moriarty is alive._

* * *

As Sherlock nears the two-year anniversary of his “death” he returns briefly to England. Moriarty’s network--much less impressive than the man himself--is nearly finished, and he has some time before he needs to make his next move. More importantly, he’s finally tracked down a brother: Andy Moriarty, station master in west England. He’s curious.

Andy Moriarty turns out to be a gregarious, balding man whose Dublin accent has been nearly erased by most of a lifetime spent in England. Sherlock (hair long and dyed, wearing an anorak that changes his silhouette, affecting a slight Scottish accent) approaches him during a slow period and they get to talking. Andy talks about football, about what’s on the telly, about his two dogs and three sons and beloved pediatrician wife. Sherlock spots two framed photos in his little station master’s office. One holds a recent family portrait featuring the aforementioned dogs and sons and wife. They are happy and cheerful and quite utterly boring.

The other is a faded snap dating back to the 80s, judging by the fashion and wear. It shows a dark-haired man and woman beaming over two young boys. The taller of the two has Andy’s easy smile and an arm draped around the smaller one. The smaller one gazes off to the side, expression blank. Not sullen, not vacant, just blank. Sherlock recognizes Moriarty’s profile in him, even decades out of date. He would recognize it anywhere.

Sherlock walks away from the conversation utterly repulsed by the banality of the man. He’d been hoping for-- expecting?--some flash of brilliance, some indication of Moriarty’s own ferocious intelligence, and there had been…nothing. Andy Moriarty was just an ordinary little man going about his ordinary little life. Well, he’d expected as much from looking at him, but the reality was still staggering.

He didn’t bother looking up the parents. Moriarty’s father was dead and his mother in a nursing home. Their biographies didn’t inspire much confidence in finding brilliance in either of them either.

Empathy’s never come easy to Sherlock, and yet, how easily he can slide into Moriarty’s shoes. Friendless and shoved around by the larger, brighter, _ordinary_ boys. Drowning in a sea of smaller intellects, forced to plod along with them while his mind raced a hundred thousand steps ahead. He’d had enough of that as a child himself, clawing his way through public school, and he’d responded by biting back before he could be hit, by downing every drug he could get his hands on just to feel something akin to intellectual stimulation.

Never had Sherlock been so grateful to have Mycroft in his life as the day he walked away from Andy Moriarty. No matter the dull little classmates, no matter the pharmacological cocktails, at least he’d always had that one other mind to measure his own against, even if they’d never exactly been cozy. If he hadn’t had even that... If he’d been all alone… If he’d grown up so thoroughly and violently alone, with nothing but his own brain for company...

He’d have been the one with the gun in his mouth. He's sure of it.

* * *

Things are still precarious between him and John after his return. Sherlock tries to be more honest, to make up for two years of dishonesty. But here is something he will never tell his best friend:

Sometimes he enters his mind palace just to see Moriarty.

Sometimes he uses drugs to go deep enough to see Moriarty.

* * *

_When Sherlock steps into 221B Baker Street, Moriarty is standing at the far windows, gazing out at a dark and stormy night. What lies beyond is not a busy London street, but the edge of an impossibly tall precipice, the start of an impossibly long fall. Thunder rattles the teacups in their saucers._

_Down here, the TV’s always tuned to a dead channel, and the kettle’s always just about to boil._

_Moriarty glances over his shoulder as he approaches. “Getting bored again out there, Sherlock?”_

_Sherlock does not respond._

_Moriarty walks over to Sherlock’s chair and drops himself in it, as relaxed as a king on his throne. He’s dressed the way he was that afternoon at St. Bart’s: designer suit, short coat, slicked-back hair. Thankfully, his skull appears to be intact this time._

_Sherlock is not a fool. He understands that this Moriarty is not actually Moriarty. He’s a product of Sherlock’s subconscious, a mind palace construct drawn from a handful of encounters, careful extrapolation of observed traits, and the past he’s cobbled together over a year and change of puzzle work. He’s something dark inside Sherlock, an ugly truth that can only be expressed through the face of the man who shared it. (You’ve come the closest. But now you’re in my way.) He shouldn’t miss this Moriarty, who isn’t even Moriarty but just Sherlock’s image of him, but he does. He does._

_Moriarty reminds him of how alone he is. Moriarty reminds him of how alone he isn’t. Moriarty is under his skin, nestled close to his heart where he can never hurt anyone again. Moriarty is half his heart cut away like a cancer, for fear of collateral damage. Moriarty is dead. Long live Moriarty._

_“You know the answer to that,” Sherlock says, and serves them tea._

**Author's Note:**

> From Wikipedia: "an infection that is active but does not produce noticeable symptoms may be called inapparent, silent, subclinical, or occult."


End file.
